Carlisle, the Volturi and a Roman Bath
by SulpiciaDoesntApprove
Summary: The real reason why Carlisle left the Volturi.


_**MTV **__**totally made me get ideas. In case you don't know what I'm talking about: there was an interview with Jamie Campbell Bower (Caius) where he said that there will be a scene with the three naked Volturi leaders in a Roman bath and an awkward, clothed Carlisle. He was kidding, but I found it hilarious all the more. XD**_

_**So here I give you **__**a fic about the Volturi and Carlisle… in a Roman bath. Since it doesn't really fit with any other of my fics l just made it a separate story. **_

_**I'm still sick, so it isn't high literature or anything… Meh, I just wrote it for the fun of it.**_

_**Disclaimer (since I tend to forget them): Twilight is not mine. **_

---

"Why did you leave the Volturi, Carlisle?" Bella asked and looked up at me with her big brown eyes. She was leaning against Edward's shoulder and he put his arm around her waist. My son already knew from my thoughts, but I had never told the others in the family the real reason why I finally decided to leave the powerful coven, not even my wife Esme.

Edward chuckled.

I remembered.

---

_I had stayed with the Volturi for about three decades when I started to think about leaving again._

_What__ brought on these thoughts for the first time was one visitor assuming I was one of them. "Because," he explained himself, "you have that mad glint in your eyes. Just like them."_

_Hearing that made me feel uneasy._

_But it wasn't what made me leave._

_That particular evening… the evening I literally fled out of Volterra, seemed to be like any normal evening at first._

_I wandered through the huge castle with its labyrinthine corridors and halls, looking for Aro. I wanted to discuss something with him._

_I was just walking past__ Jane's room, a place I generally avoided. The heavy door was ajar and I could see the little girl standing by her window. She wore an angelic expression on her childlike face and was torturing an innocent bird. I looked away quickly, shuddering inwardly._

_That girl had some serious issues._

_I knew from Aro that her talent was shaped by the pain she endured when __the frightened villagers burned at the stake for witchcraft back in the Middle Ages. I tried to have pity with her at first, but learned quickly that perhaps pity was not what she wanted._

_Her brother was less cruel, but just as creepy. He could sneak up on you and you didn't even notice until he appeared out of thin air right in front of you, his pale face apathetic, his crimson eyes glowing in the dark._

_Yes, the Witch Twins were certainly scary._

_They weren't__ the only ones though._

_Chelsea played with people's relationships like they were dolls on strings. Whenever Aro allowed her to, she twisted them, broke them and looked at the resulting mess with a mischievous smile on her face._

_Demetri tracked down every living creature, humans and animals alike, he could find within the castle walls. It was like a crazy game he never grew tired of._

_And the leaders weren't a bit better than the guards._

_I couldn't shake off the felling that I had landed in a madhouse._

_My compassion was __wearing thin._

_It was not that I didn't like Aro and his brothers, I truly did, but sometimes they were just too much, even for my tolerant, understanding nature._

_To put it in modern American language, they were starting to weird me out._

_I wasn't bothered by Aro's friendlines__s. However, what did bother me was his way of hugging me whenever he just felt like it. He did that with everyone who allowed him, it was just Aro, but I couldn't help feeling just a little awkward whenever he did it. It was just… I had my limits._

_Caius was a nice dialogue partner. I could talk with him about books, science and politics, he was much closer to reality than aloof Aro. But he had a terrible temper and an obsession with fire that truly frightened me at times. He was a vampire, a being that was supposed to fear fire because it was the only thing that could destroy him, yet__ he lit almost everything flammable he could find on fire. Especially when he was angry. Which was almost always the case. And he had a hatred for everything canine. I mean, I could understand that he didn't like the Children of the Moon much because one of them almost killed him centuries ago, but did he really have to hunt down every small stray dog that got near the castle?_

_Marcus was… Marcus. He rarely talked and __I never got to know much about him or his past. It was almost as if nobody dared to talk about it, fearing they would evoke old demons._

_The Volturi were certainly a strange folk._

_I shook my head and__ followed Aro's scent until I got to a part of the castle I hadn't visited very often before. It was near the cellar, dark and too gloomy for my liking._

_There was a wooden door, smaller than the ones on the upper floors. I walked towards it. _

"_I wouldn't go in there if I were you!"__ a human servant tried to call after me but I ignored him and opened the door to an unknown room with tiled floors and walls._

_I turned around the corner and froze there._

_Aro, Marcus and Caius where there. In a spacious room with benches against the wall and three basins. __The three ancients where in the water._

_Naked._

_Caius' head with the white hair snapped up in my direction._

_Marcus didn't show any reaction. He stayed an unmoving sculpture. Like __always._

_Aro's face lit up into his usual blinding smile as soon as he saw me. "Carlisle!" he exclaimed, "what are you doing here?"_

_I couldn't come up with a coherent answer. To be honest, the sight of the three naked Volturi leaders made me feel so awkward I couldn't even form a coherent thought!_

_Their nudeness was one thing… me walking in on it without even knocking was another._

_Not that I was a prude but… __It was just… nothing I was used to._

"_How do you like our Roman bath, Carlisle?" Aro asked, totally oblivious to the awkwardness of the situation, "it is a little something we have saved over the centuries. I admit, we are nostalgic like that. It is a good place to take a bath, relax and talk about political matters." He tilted his head slightly, his gaze inquiring and curious._

_When I was human, bathing houses used to be places… with a rather bad reputation. I didn't tell him, of course._

_I desperately tried to keep my eyes on my feet__ and be inconspicuous about it at the same time._

_But of course Aro noticed my discomfort._

_He__ kept on staring at me, probably waiting for me to speak. I didn't._

"_Is there something wrong?" __Aro asked, frowning slightly._

_I swallowed. __Four men in a Roman bath, three completely naked, one fully clothed. Did he even realize how awkward this was?_

_Judging from his expression, he didn't. He just seemed confused by my obvious silence._

_Trust Aro to not find anything awkward in a situation like this._

_And it got even worse._

"_Why don't you join us, dear friend?" Aro asked __and got out of the water, his naked body and long, black hair dripping with water, to stretch out a wet hand to touch me and read my thoughts._

_That was the __final straw._

_I just turned around and ran away, not looking back. Yes, it was not a very manly thing to do, but I fled. I didn't care what everyone would think of me right then._

"_That's it!"__ I told myself, "I'm not going to stay in this madhouse a minute longer!"_

_I left the same night, heading for the New World._

---

Yes, that was the real reason why I left the Volturi.

But I could never tell Bella that!

So I came up with a much simpler explanation. I didn't like to lie but it was not a lie… technically…

"I greatly admired their civility, their refinement," I explained to Bella in a calm voice, "but they persisted in trying to cure my aversion to 'our natural food source'. They tried to persuade me and I tried to persuade them, to no avail." Bella waited for me to continue, but I didn't. "That's all," I finished.

Edward chuckled again.

---

_**I just couldn't resist.**_

_**Jep, I'm playing with stereotypes.**__** It's all in good fun. ;P**_


End file.
